Many Japanese were falsely taught that “Japan had invaded Asia during the War”. John Koster, the author of “OPERATION SNOW” which depicts what went on behind the scenes which led to the Pacific War, and Happy Science’s Director-General of Foreign Affairs, Yukihisa Oikawa, engaged in a dialogue to discuss this very issue. Furthermore, we spoke with Henry S. Stokes, former Tokyo Chief for the New York Times.

 

America’s War in the Pacific Greatly Benefitted the Soviet Union

I was struck by the idea that it seemed incredible that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor when they knew they couldn’t win the war. And I wondered why that was. As I researched into it, I found out that the one country that did very well by the Japanese attack was neither Japan nor the United States but the Soviet Union.

Because of the war between Japan, the United States, and Britain, the Soviets were allowed to concentrate on their war with Germany. If they had to fight Japan and Germany at the same time, they probably would’ve been defeated. They had 15% of their army and many of their best tanks in Mongolia to protect themselves from the Japanese, and Pearl Harbor enabled them to move thousands of soldiers and hundreds and hundreds of tanks into Europe, just in time to stop the Germans in front of Moscow and Leningrad. It was the greatest thing that could’ve happened to them.

 

A Russian Spy Began the War Between America and Japan

But I had to ask myself, “Why did it happen?” I found out that there was a young Soviet agent named Vitali Prokhorov who was told to start a war between the United States and Japan, because even though Stalin didn’t believe it, some Soviets knew that the Germans were going to attack the country in May or June of that year. He went to Washington where he spoke with a Soviet sympathizer named Harry Dexter White, who was an enthusiastic Communist, but he kept quiet about it.

 

The American Historical Record for WWII Didn’t Make Any Sense to Me

Q: Why did you choose this topic?

A: On a personal basis, my wife is Japanese, my brother in law, my oldest brother in law, is one of the last living Kamikaze volunteers. I thought about them, and I often wondered why Pearl Harbor happened. It didn’t make any sense, neither from the American nor from the Japanese perspective. I became very interested in trying to find out why the attack on Pearl Harbor took place; why it was a surprise, and what it really meant.

 

Who Believed the Pearl Harbor Story?

Q: Did you believe that it was a sneak attack?

A: Not always. My father, who was in the army in World War II, and my cousin, who was in the Navy in World War II, said there was something very fake about the surprise. They said they didn’t really believe that Washington was surprised by the attack. The people in Hawaii may have been surprised, but they believed that Roosevelt and the people in his cabinet knew that it was going to happen, but they didn’t take steps to prevent it or to even warn people to be prepared for it. That made them quite angry.

 

Leaders in Washington Knew That the Pearl Harbor Attack Would Happen

Q: Was there a conspiracy in Washington?

A: Yes, of course, there was. FDR knew before the attack. Twelve hours before the attack took place, FDR read the last part of the Japanese code. He looked up at Harry Hopkins, his advisor, and said, “This means war.” He knew it was going to happen, and several people have quoted it such as Jean Edward Smith, who loved FDR, and Finis Farr, who hated him. They both said, “This means war.”

Twelve hours before the attack, instead of making a telephone call to Pearl Harbor, he sent a Western Union telegram, which got there after the attack was almost finished. It was a worthless warning. FDR knew it. He didn’t plan the attack; however, the attack was planned behind his back.

Russia Could Not Fight a War on Two Fronts

Q: Why did the U.S. and Japan have to go to war?

A: Vitali Prokhorov, a Soviet agent, was told to go to Washington and start a war between the United States and Japan. The Soviet Union did not want to fight Germany and Japan at the same time. The Japanese and the Russians had a battle in Mongolia early in 1939, and while the Russians won, because they had better tanks, the Japanese were much tougher than they had expected. The Soviets said if these people were to fight against us with full force, it’d tie up a quarter of the army in Asia, and they wouldn’t be able to fight the Germans effectively. They had to have a war between the United States and Japan, to keep the Japanese out of Siberia, and out of Russia.

 

The KGB Plotted To Create the Pacific War

Q: Who planned this war?

A: Soviet Agents and the MKVD, later called the KGB, planned for the war to happen, and they made sure that it did.

 

The KGB Used a Russian Informant Who Worked with the Secretary of the Treasury

Q: How did the plan happen?

A: That young Russian agent, Vitali Prokhorov, was in Washington. He called up a man who had been providing information for the Russians for about five years, but then quit when he was frightened. His name was Harry Dexter White. He was senior official in the U.S. Treasury Department, and he was the real brains behind the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., who was very rich, but not very intelligent. White did most of his thinking for him.

White and Prokhorov talked; Prokhorov told him, “It’s absolutely necessary that we have a war between the U.S. and Japan. We don’t want to fight Germany and Japan at the same time.” White said, “I’ve been thinking about it on my own, and I can make it happen.”

 

How the Secretary of the Treasury Allowed the KGB To Prevent FDR from Peace Negotiations with Japanese Leaders Prior to the Start of the War

First thing he did was to make sure that Japan’s oil supply and credit were cut off. Then, when the Japanese were willing to negotiate, he made sure that Roosevelt did not negotiate with Prince Fumimaro Konoe, who didn’t want war, which forced the war to happen.

At the last minute, Roosevelt realized a war could happen. He didn’t particularly want a war with Japan. He actually wanted a war with Germany to save England. He tried to tell the Japanese, “We’ll give you back some of your oil, if you gradually withdraw from China.” The Japanese had an interest in his proposal.

Harry Dexter White wrote a hysterical letter for Henry Morgenthau to sign, and sent it to FDR. He wrote, “This is the greatest betrayal in history, if you do it, you’ll be ridiculed; you must stand strong. We’ll win, They won’t attack.” Of course, he knew that they would attack, but Roosevelt got the letter, and he told everybody to stand tough. Then Pearl Harbor happened.

 

The Pacific Fleet Was Not Supplied Properly for the Start of War

Q: Why Pearl Harbor

A: The specific fleet was sent to Pearl Harbor in 1940 for reasons that nobody could understand. The admiral in charge, James Otto Richardson, said, “Why are we here? We don’t have the equipment we need, the sailors don’t like it here, and they want to go back to California.” He was just told, “Stay a little longer, stay a little longer, and stay a little longer.”

Admiral Richardson finally told FDR that FDR no longer enjoyed his confidence because he knew that they were not ready for a war with Japan at that time. FDR fired him without warning, and he placed Admiral Kimmel in charge; Admiral Kimmel was a tougher article than Richardson, but he too, complained. “I’m not getting the equipment I need.”

When the attack came, he wasn’t ready for it. Not because he hadn’t expected it, but because he had not been properly equipped. Most of the weapons he needed were being sent to England rather than Hawaii.

 

People Manipulated FDR’s Ability to Make Decisions

Q: How much did FDR know?

A: FDR was not terribly well informed, but he did understand as he said to a group of people, “If we had cut off their oil supply completely, we would’ve had a war with Japan at a time we didn’t want a war with Japan.” However, war with Germany was okay. He said that comment, so he knew that it was a dangerous situation, but behind his back, other people in Washington, including Dean Acheson, made absolutely sure that the Japanese didn’t get their oil supplies restored. They really tried to strangle Japan.

 

Americans Preferred the Idea of a War with Germany Opposed to a Fight with Japan

FDR wanted to warn them, and Acheson wanted to provoke them. He, too, wanted a war. Acheson wasn’t a communist, he was an anti-communist, but he wanted a war to save England. He realized that most Americans did not want a war with Germany again, but they were accepting of a war with Japan, either due to racism or due to the fact that they thought it would be easy or both. And it backfired, because it was much worse than anyone expected. It wasn’t for years until American people found out how bad the damage at Pearl Harbor was.

 

There Were Americans Who Didn’t Approve of the War

Q: There were communists and anti-communists?

A: There were Anti-Communists who were in favor of Britain. They wanted to help Britain win the war. Many Americans did not want to fight. German Americans, Irish Americans, many other groups did not want to get involved in another war with Germany to help Britain. They said, that’s their war, let them fight it out. It’s okay to sell them equipment, it’s even okay to give them equipment, but don’t send American men overseas.

 

FDR Broke His Public Campaign Promises About Fighting Abroad

In November of 1940, when he was running for office, Roosevelt said three different times, “I will not send your boys into any foreign wars.” A year later, he sent American troops to war. He knew 80% of the Americans would not accept a war with Germany, but if Americans were attacked first, particularly by the Japanese, then the public would find war acceptable.

 

The Hull Note Provoked Japan To Fight

Q: Did Henry Dexter White develop the Hull Note?

A: He was the mastermind behind the development of it. The Hull Note was so tough that he knew the Japanese would not accept it. Without even having a revolution at home or a revolution in Korea, Japanese moral in China would’ve been undermined. It would’ve been a disaster had they gone along with it. The Japanese felt that they had to fight.

The Japanese Planned To Fight a Short War and To Negotiate for Peace Quickly
Japan never imagined that it could conquer the United States. Its plan was to take as much territory as it could in the first six months to a year. Then it wanted to give back the territory and keep the core of its empire intact.” Japan wanted to negotiate for peace.

That was the way World War I ended. That was the way every war in American history ended except for the Civil War. The Civil War was a rebellion by the Southern States. FDR didn’t know much about history. He adopted the idea of unconditional surrender because that was what the Americans had said in the Civil War. However, it was completely different; the Civil War was an internal rebellion, and Japan was a sovereign nation with its own culture. An unconditional war was not a good idea. What they should’ve done was negotiate terms instead of all those horrible air raids.

 

America Made Unrealistic Demands of Japan to Guarantee the Beginning of a War

Q: Was the Hull Note what made Japan start the war?

A: The most critical part of the Hull Note was where the Japanese were told that they had to get out of China immediately, instead of 90 days, and that they had to get out of Manchuria, which Teddy Roosevelt had basically given to Japan in 1912. Roosevelt, the Taft Katsura Agreement, and part of the Root-Takahira Agreement said Manchuria was for Japan to control. They pulled the rug out from underneath the Japanese in regard to that promise because they knew that it would start a revolt if the news ever became public.

They also said that the Japanese had to give up a large part of their Naval and Military production to the United States, which was nonsense and totally unacceptable. It was like asking for surrender without a war. Japanese politics were very unstable at that time, and the requests were completely unacceptable not only for the Emperor and his generals, but also to most people.

 

Japan Never Planned to Maintain Its Occupation of Indo-China

Q: What about the other parts of the continent?

A: Well, the Japanese had already offered to leave Indo-China as soon as the war ended. The only reason they occupied Indo-China was to cut off supplies to China, but they had no intention of keeping Indo-China.

 

Japan Had a Better Military Than America at the Start of the War

Q: FDR used the Hull Note to try and push for a war?

A: White did. FDR was so far out in space that he didn’t really understand the Japanese. He thought that this would be a war with the Philippines. He didn’t realize he was fighting a naval power that had battle ships with bigger guns, that the Japanese had better fighting planes, and that the Japanese were willing to die much more readily than the Americans were. It was a disaster.

In the long term, because of its size and lack of resources, Japan was doomed, but in the short term, it could do a tremendous amount of damage, as it did, and FDR didn’t realize it. He figured Japan was some silly little place that he could win over.

 

America Initially Wanted Japan’s Help to Keep Russia out of Asia

Teddy Roosevelt actually admired the Japanese, and his house was full of Japanese souvenirs. He thought that the Japanese were great people, and that was the reason he told the Japanese, “You take care of Korea, I’ll take care of the Philippines, and lets not bother one another.” He also said, “You can run Manchuria if you do it with circumspection.

He gave Japan pretty much all that it wanted because he wanted to use the Japanese to keep Russia out of Asia, especially out of China and out of the British holdings in India. It was basically a three-part agreement between the Anglo-Saxon countries and Japan to assure that the Anglo-Saxon countries and Japan controlled Asia without the interference of Russia or to some extent Germany.

 

America Did Not Have Enough Money to Operate Its Military in Asia

Although the Anglo-Saxon countries wanted to keep Asia for themselves, Teddy Roosevelt knew that to control China, he would need a navy as good as Britain’s and an army as good as Germany’s. That was too expensive, and he wanted the Japanese to do it. They were closer, and they understood it better. It worked until the British and Japanese alliance fell apart.

 

America Was Interested in China, Even Though Japan Was a Better Business Partner

Q: How attractive was China to the U.S.?

A: There was a group called the “China Lobby”, which was made up of missionaries and businessmen who did a lot of business in China. They thought that China was very important for American interests. If you looked at it economically, America had ten times as much business with Japan as it had with China, and the Japanese paid off their debts ten times more often than the Chinese did.

 

Germany Was Number One in China

America’s real interest was to maintain peace with Japan first and China second. The big player in China was not the United States; it was Germany. The Germans had an alliance with Chiang Kai-shek, which lasted till 1938. If you saw pictures of Chian Kai-shek’s soldiers, the soldiers in the good units wore German helmets, carried German rifles, and had German military instructors.

Perhaps Harry Dexter White also found that intolerable. He didn’t want the Germans running China any more than he wanted the Germans taking over the Soviet Union, because he was a great admirer of what he called “the Russian System”, as opposed to what he thought of as “Capitalism” and “Christianity”. He hoped that the Russian system would prevail, and he tried to make it happen.

 

Americans Tried To Control the Chinese Market Despite Its Limitations

Q: How attractive was China back then?

A: It was a huge market because the people had almost no manufacturing, but they understood money and credit. You could not go to most places in Africa or the Middle-East with the same expectations. In China, there was a mercantile culture where people understood that you had to pay for this, and you had to pay for that, that this was money, and that was credit.

 

Since America Couldn’t Afford a War with China, It Tried to Use Japan as a Puppet

However, China didn’t have much manufacturing. It was a huge, huge market, and the Americans did everything to control the market that they could in short of a war. America didn’t want to fight China because it knew that a war with China would be too expensive. It was a huge country. If America had invaded its territory, the Chinese would have gotten angry. Americans basically tried to use Japan to control China.

 

Japan Lacked Access to Natural Resources

Q: What strategy did FDR use to cause a war?

A: He cut off Japanese credit, he cut off their scrap iron, and above all, he cut off their oil supply, which Harry Dexter White had been talking about since 1935. A Soviet agent, who defected, became a Christian, and he left again as a Communist, stole some of White’s papers and saved them in a farm in Maryland. The papers were about Japan and a large part of them were about Japan’s oil supply.

FDR realized what White had known, that if he cut off Japan’s oil supply, Japan could not maintain its modern navy. It’d have trouble maintaining its modern army, too, which was where Japan was the most vulnerable.

 

America Prevented the Dutch Sales of Natural Resources to Japan in Return for False Promises of Protection

And that was what FDR did; he threatened Japan’s oil supply to make sure it became intensely angry. Then, the Americans and the British manipulated the Dutch in Indonesia to make sure that the Japanese couldn’t buy oil from them, and to ensure that the Dutch were afraid of them. The Dutch would’ve sold oil to the Japanese just to avoid a fight with their country, but the Americans said, “Oh no, we’ll back you.” However, when the Japanese took over Indonesia, Americans didn’t do a very good job of protecting it.

Q: Did Japan become angry?

A: It was forced into becoming upset; its hands were tied.

 

Japan’s Reaction to America’s Black Ships

Q: Why didn’t Japan surrender?

A: In the 1850s, when Americans first went to Japan, instead of rolling over and playing dead, the Japanese modernized very quickly. Everybody was amazed to see the progress that they made, turning from a culture on the level of the Renaissance into a culture that equaled other cultures in the world in manufacturing, the navy, the army, business, railroads, and electricity. It was huge, people just couldn’t believe it.

 

America’s Early Attempts to Colonize Japan

How could the Japanese have done it in such a short time? The Americans probably hoped to invade Japan in the 1860s when there were several bombardments and the Americans wanted to take advantage of clan feuds to get involved, but what Americans realized was that they couldn’t do it at an affordable cost.

America had a ship called the USSY Wyoming. It used to sail around to Japanese cities at the same time that America was fighting for its life in the Civil War. America had a ship sailing around helping the British and the Dutch bard Japan.
 

America Failed to Conquer Korea

What sense did that make? In 1871, the Americans also attempted to invade Korea, but they lost. The Koreans chased them out. At that time, they got an idea. Why not allow Japan take care of Korea? America could take care of the Philippines, and it did.

 

Russian Spies Couldn’t Speak Japanese Well Enough to Forge a Letter

Q: What was the Tanaka Memorial?

A: It was a Russian forgery that was supposed to be Japan’s plan to take over the entire world. Three Russian officers wrote it in 1931. They apparently wanted to show that Japan was evil, and they wanted the world to fight that country.

They pretended that Japan not only wanted to take over China, it wanted to take over Germany, and then it wanted to take over England. They claimed Japan then wanted to take over the United States, South America, and Australia.

The Tanaka Memorial was a forgery. It was a fake, but people tried to use it. They wanted to translate it back into Japanese, but they found that it couldn’t be done, because it wasn’t written in Japanese style.

It was a classic Russian forgery. Forty years before, the Russians created a forgery called the “Protocol of the Elders of Zion” about how the Jews wanted to take over the world. It was very much the same idea. They took a few events, and then projected them as if they had been deliberately planned. When they were in the middle of their long winter, and they were tired of playing chess, they did forgery.

 

The Russian’s Story Spread

Q: How famous was the Tanaka Memorial?

A: It was made into two movies. It was made into one movie called Jack London, written by Isaac Don Levine who was an anti-communist. Jack London met Captain Tanaka, who told him about Japan’s plan to take over the world in a friendly sort of way. Then Jack went off to try and tell everyone about it, but no one believed him.

However, it never happened. Jack London was a promulgated drunk, and Japanese servants held together his whole life, because he couldn’t keep his act together. The other one was Blood on the Sun with James Cagney where he played an American reporter who tried to take the Tanaka Memorial to the West. However, since the Tanaka Memorial was not written in Japan, and the Russians wrote it, the whole movie was a fraud.

 

American Intellectuals Trusted the Forgery

Q: People became serious about the Tanaka Memorial?

A: People, who thought of themselves as intellectuals, believed that it was real. I mean, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, and he told everybody what he was going to do, and in his twisted way, he was actually telling the truth to them. Yet, the Tanaka Memorial, which was supposed to be Japan’s Mein Kampf, three Russians made up, and promoted it as Japanese when it was not. It was a Russian forgery.

 

The Japanese Didn’t Care What Foreigners Wrote About Them

Q: What did the Japanese government do?

A: No one thought anyone would take it seriously. There was so much stuff that Whites wrote when they were living in Asia at the time, which made absolutely no sense, and the Japanese thought that no one would believe the story. Giichi Tanaka was a real person, but he didn’t write a memorial to take over the world.

 

The Tanaka Memorial Made a Permanent Impression on the American Public

Q: But it still became famous?

A: Absolutely. Today, Americans are constantly telling the veterans still, “If it wasn’t for you guys, we’d all be speaking German, or we’d all be speaking Japanese.” Neither Japan nor Germany expected to take over the continental United States. They didn’t have the aircrafts, they didn’t have the power, and the Germans didn’t have the Navy. The Germans wanted to dominate Eastern Europe, the Japanese wanted to build buffer states to keep the Russians and to some extent, the Germans, from invading their territory. There was no world takeover plan. It was crafted fiction.

 

The Wealthy in America Did Not Want War with Germany

Q: Did the Democrats and Republicans share the same opinions?

A: Many people in both parties did not want war with Japan. In particular, in the Republican Party, members did not want war with Germany because a lot of them had money invested there as did some Democrats. Henry Ford had money invested in Germany; President Bush’s father had money invested in Germany. Those people had one great fear, which was Russia or the Soviet Union, because the Soviet Union was a threat to everyone who was Capitalist as well as everyone who was Christian. They were not anywhere near as worried about Japan or Germany as they were about Russia.

 

People Hated Russia the Most

Harry Dexter White, who strongly supported Russia, hated Germany because he was Jewish, but he didn’t much care about Japan. Somehow, he had to make sure that the United States got into a war on the side of Russia, which at that time was the most hated country in Europe. White had to do it through manipulation.

In American schoolbooks, and when people take the SAT test to get into American colleges, there’s information that states the axis nations were Germany, Italy, and Japan. But that isn’t true. The axis countries were Germany, Italy, Japan, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and for a while, Vichy France, which was an ally of Germany.

Most countries in Europe hated Russia far more than they hated Germany, and many countries in Asia feared Russia more than they feared Japan. You won’t read this fact anywhere, but there were half a million Chinese soldiers who fought in the Japanese army against the Nationalists and the Communists, and many of them were very good soldiers. You can bet that if they had lived, they wouldn’t have talked about the war.

 

The Republicans Tried to Stop the War Between America and Japan

Q: What was the Republican’s view of Japan?

A: Joseph Clark Grew, who was a Republican, a fellow graduate of Groton Prep School and Harvard, tried to make peace between the United States and Japan through every responsible means. He said to Roosevelt, Prince Konoe did not want war, and if FDR were to meet with him, the prince would give him anything he wanted to make sure that there was no war.

FDR actually thought about it, but the people in the White House made sure that it never happened. Many Republicans did not want war with Japan. They knew that it would do America no good, and the war would help Russia a lot.

 

The Working Class in America Wasn’t Interested in Fighting in Foreign Countries

Q: How did the Democrats think?

A: There were some Democrats who didn’t want a war with Japan either, because they had just realized that their Democratic party in America was a party for the working people. They realized that in wars, poor people got killed, and rich people made money. The democrats didn’t want their guys supporting that scenario.

Irish people controlled the Democratic party in cities like New York and Boston, and the Irish hated the English. They hated England more than Germany did, and they didn’t want any war that could do England any good. Thus, they said, let’s keep out of this, let the British do their own fighting. They didn’t care about other people. They neither liked nor disliked Germany and Japan, and they didn’t want to help England.

 

There Was Little Enthusiasm for the Idea of War with Japan

Even in FDR’s own party, there was a lot of opposition to war. There were people from down South who thought that anyone who wasn’t White was bad, who would have been perfectly happy to fight the Japanese, in particular, because they thought it would be easy, which it wasn’t. Therefore, some of them might’ve supported the war. There were also people, who were extreme Leftists, and they saw a war with Japan as a way to get back into war with Germany. However, support for a war with Japan was not very big.

Teddy Lawson, who wrote 30 seconds over Tokyo, said “We never expected there’d be a war with Japan; we were training for a war against Germany. It came as a complete surprise.” Everybody else felt that way too, because they didn’t read the newspapers. If people had read the newspapers in the last week before Pearl Harbor, everyone would have known had how desperate the negotiations had become.

FDR came back from his vacation and tried to negotiate. FDR sent a message to the Emperor that action was likely in the Pacific. I guess people were reading the sports pages instead. Of course, the front page headlines were, across all six columns, “DANGER, POSSIBLE WAR”, but nobody read into them.

 

Pre-Wartime Propaganda in Support of Air Raids over Japan

Q: What did you think of China’s plan to attack?

A: I haven’t heard about it. I’d like to investigate it further, but I have pictures showing how easy it would have been for the Americans to bomb Japan from Russia and from the Philippines, which were published in a national magazine in October of 1941, five weeks before Pearl Harbor.

Q: Can you explain the photos?

A: They were from the United States News and World Report. That publication died last year. It is now no longer in print, but back then it showed maps of various places, which included the Aleutian Islands, China, Russia, Guam, and the Philippines. The magazine talked about how easy it would have been for American planes to subdue Japan through air raids, if trouble were to break out.

The purpose of the article might have been to calm the American people and to tell them that America didn’t have to worry about the Japan. This news created the appearance that Japan wasn’t going to fight, and if it did, American would have an easy win.

 

Japan Liberated the Philippines

The magazine ran the story while America had some 20,000 American soldiers that were stuck in the Philippines. As it turned out, the story backfired. On the second day of the war, when nobody knew what was going to happen, but everybody knew there was a war going on between the United States and Japan, the Japanese bombed the Philippines. They destroyed most of the American planes. Then, the Japanese invaded the islands. Philippine Scouts were part of the American Army, and most of the Filipinos ran away.

The Americans found themselves facing an equal number of Japanese, and they could not defeat them. Consequently, Americans claimed that 250,000 Japanese invaded the Philippines, but the real number was actually 25,000. A friend of mine, who’s an American Indian, once said, “Every time the white man gets swamped, he adds a zero to the end of the enemy’s group.” Americans wanted to claim they had been beaten by ten to one odds, but it didn’t happen that way.

 

The Pre-War American Deals with Japan in Asia

Q: Were the Japanese aggressive?

A: Japanese aggression within the Asian community started with American support and encouragement. The United States, with the Taft-Katsura Agreement, gave the Japanese permission to take over Korea, and the Japanese did. In 1912, the United States granted economic control of Manchuria to Japan, because America knew that Japan needed the resources. When that agreement fell apart, because China and Japan both allied with the United States during World War I, there were a lot of politics.

Both wanted Shangtong, which the Germans took from the Chinese in 1897. For a while after the war, the Japanese held on to Shangtong. The Americans then told the Japanese to help them with an invasion of Siberia. The Japanese talked about it for a year, and inquired amongst themselves whether America would really support an invasion. Would America really support Japan, they questioned each other.

 

America Didn’t Keep Its Promises

Terauchi was the Prime Minister. He wasn’t quite sure. He didn’t trust America. He asked Americans to send some of their troops and money, and then he’d help with the fight. What happened next was the Americans, the British, and the French joined the Japanese with the plan to invade Siberia, but they then backed out. They left the Japanese stuck, which worsened Japan’s ability to get along with Russia. The Japanese eventually left. In most cases of Japanese aggression, the Japanese were told to do something, and then the carpet was pulled out from under them.

 

Japan Wanted to Prevent Russia from Overcoming China

Q: The Japanese were the aggressors?

A: No. They were trying to build a ring of buffer states to keep the Russians from dominating all of Asia, because the Russians were a real threat. At that point, the Chinese were not much of a threat. Chinese people were intelligent, hard working, and there were huge numbers of them. They were used to their bad government, and they took care of their families. They never put their trust in politics at all. Today, from what my friends have told me, the Chinese are still the same.

China was not a threat to Japan. Russia was a threat to Japan because Russia had a government that shot people for saying the wrong things. It was far, far more tyrannical than the Japanese could have ever dreamed.

 

Americans Didn’t Understand the Structure of Japan’s Government

American people back then didn’t realize that there was a Japanese diet and Japanese politicans voted laws into effect. People thought that the Emperor was up there, like some Turkish monarch, and could point to a man and have him killed. Japan was actually a constitutional monarchy. Americans had no idea.

 

Koreans Have Been Talking out of Both Sides of Their Mouths

Q: The Great East Asian War, was it a war of aggression or liberation?

A: The answer to that question might have depended on the crowd that you asked. Many Koreans would have told the Americans and other White people, “Oh, the Japanese, they were so terrible, they were so cruel to us.” If the same people had talked to my Japanese wife, they would have said, “You guys were really brave, and the Americans were sissies. You were so much smarter than them.”

There were people from Taiwan who absolutely loved the Japanese. There were a number of people in India who supported Japan like Mahatma Gandhi, who was sat in his jail cell and starved himself to promote peace.

 

Gandhi Wasn’t Upset with Japan

One day, the British resident general came in and said to him, “Gandhi, gee, we understand that there might be a war with Japan; if you tell the Indian people to support us, we’ll give you your independence at the end of the war.” And Gandhi’s eyes opened and said, “Why should I accept a check when the bank is about to fail?” What he meant was, Japan would never try to take over India. His country was in a mess, and the only thing he could do was to kick out the British. That was good enough for him.

 

Japan Proved to the Rest of Asia That It Was Possible to Self-Govern

Q: Was independence hard to obtain?

A: Once the various Asian countries, except perhaps for Korea and China, saw that White men could be defeated with an equal number of Asian forces, they were no longer afraid. They had been beaten so often that the idea of taking on the mighty Europeans gave them the creeps. When they saw the Japanese do it, they said, we can do it, too, and they did it.

 

Colonial Powers Lost Their Ability to Oppress Asian Governments After WWII

European countries were so exhausted from the war with Japan and more especially, from the war with Hitler, that they had all the fight knocked out of them. Which people from the Netherlands were going to try and take over the colonial empire after they had been living on grass and potatoes for four years? The French were burnt out. The British lost Ireland after World War I, and they lost India after World War II, just because they were tired of fighting, and because they had been shown that they were wrong. Japan was one of the countries that showed them.

 

Americans Ignored the Press Before the War Began

Q: What happened in the American newspapers?

A: The idea, that Pearl Harbor was a complete surprise, was something that the American people made up in their minds after the fact. Because for at least seven days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the newspapers had headlines like “FDR RUSHES TO CAPITAL: FAR EAST CRISIS GRAVE!” They showed that the Americans had expected something to take place between America and Japan, which was very serious.

In other words, they were already afraid of a potential war. The date for that headline was December 1st, which was seven days before Pearl Harbor. “ACTION LIKELY IN PACIFIC” showed the situation had been getting worse. That was December 5th. People had four days of headlines that said there might be a war. “ANSWER TODAY: BREAK NEAR”; that headline showed that a war was going to take place in the next day or two.

No one remembered those headlines. People only remembered a radio broadcast which said, “An unprovoked and dastardly attack on Pearl Harbor.” Well, it certainly was not unprovoked; it had been deliberately provoked. Whether it was dastardly was anybody’s guess. Most of today’s countries have been invading each other first and declaring war second. I think that the newspaper reporters, in Pearl Harbor’s case, did their job, but people’s minds didn’t function properly.

 
FDR Started the Pacific War

Q: Do people still believe that it was a sneak attack?

A: My cousin was in the Navy; he joined when he was 17. He knew that the United States started the war. He hated Roosevelt. He didn’t hate the Japanese. He got off his ship in Tokyo, and he went to a streetcar and went downtown to have drinks and stuff. He said, “Hey! This is a great place, I like it here!”

My father said Roosevelt would get American into a war any way he could, and so did most people. My uncle Al was English, and he was a little thick. He thought that it was a good thing. No one else believed it; everyone knew that it was a set up.

 

Historical Facts Must Be Shared Openly and Honestly to Prevent Further Aggressions

Q: Is it hard to find the truth in history now?

A: Yes, and I think it’s time that people should. There are now eleven countries that can make an atomic bomb; down the road there’ll be 20 or 30. Countries can’t go on acting like they’re the only world powers. People must be willing to talk. They must be willing to figure out what people really want, what people really need. How can countries work out their problems without nuclear wars or mass massacres and without sending 100,000 people who don’t know each other into other people’s countries. It’s retrograde, and it must stop.

 

Public Praise for My Publications from American Military Leaders

Q: You published your book Operation Snow two years ago?

A: Yes, it was September 17th, 2012. So far, I’ve had many reviews and most of them have been favorable. Four unfavorable reviews were written with a Russian accent. “Stalin won the war for America! Russia was good! The lend lease tanks were useless! The Russians were heroes!” Americans have said that FDR let them down, that they should have never had a war with Japan, that the Japanese did some things that were not good, but the Americans did, too, and the whole war was a set up. Those American comments were from people, who, in many cases, had been in the service themselves.

The first review was from a US Admiral. The second was from the son of the Admiral who was held responsible for Pearl Harbor. They said that this book was a breakthrough because people could finally discover the truth. The Russian guy, at the end, said Harry Dexter White was the most dangerous traitor in American history. He had become an American citizen, so he could say it and live.

 

Translations of My Book Are Available in Japanese

Q: Did the publisher print Japanese copies?

A: Yes, it promised to print five million copies in Japanese.

 

American Diplomacy Should Have Prevented War in the Pacific

Q: What would’ve happened if the US government had accepted Japan’s plans?

A: The Japanese basically made an offer to withdrawal gradually from Chinese territory and to give back Indo-China as soon as they signed a peace treaty with the Chinese. There would have been no war had the Japanese been listened to.

The Americans professed not to believe their words, because they couldn’t admit to themselves that the United States sponsored a large part of the so-called previous “Japanese Aggression”. The Japanese asked permission before they went into Siberia; they asked permission before they went into Korea. They did attack Manchuria, but they had already been given permission to enter Manchuria before. The Japanese were portrayed as Darwinian carnivorous aggressors, but what they were actually doing was building a defensive perimeter to keep Russia as far away from Japan as possible.

 

Unrealistic Terms for the Conclusion of Aggression Between America and Japan

Q: What were your thoughts on the use of the atomic bombs?

A: Japan wanted to take as much territory as possible, and then to give back everything that wasn’t intrinsically part of its Empire in return for peace. The Americans wanted an unconditional surrender, which was unprecedented.

America didn’t demand an unconditional surrender from Germany after World War I. It didn’t demand an unconditional surrender and try to take over Spain during the Spanish American War. It didn’t keep Mexico City after the Mexican War, and it didn’t try to invade England; but unconditional surrender was FDR’s silly idea based on the American Civil War.

The unconditional surrender put Japan in such a position that it could not give up unless something absolutely horrific happened. America had spent so much money on the atomic bombs that it intended to use on Germany, but the Germans were overcome before the bomb was ready.

America was stuck with a project that was hugely expensive, and it ensured no practical purpose. It was interesting to learn that neither Eisenhower, MacArthur, nor Curtis LeMay approved the use of the atomic bomb. It was unnecessary at that stage. As they said, it was a political decision, and those bombs should have never been dropped.

 

America Bombed Japan to Scare Russia

Q: What was the real purpose of the bombings?

A: They were to show Stalin what could be done to a city. Stalin, at that point, was pretty obviously not going to give back Poland. He was probably not going to give back East Germany either. America wanted to show Stalin that although it coudn’t throw away 20 million people the way Germany had, it could turn Moscow into a sea of glass. I think it was to intimidate Stalin as well as to force a Japanese surrender.

 

Americans Felt Better About Killing Asians than Europeans

Q: Was there a racial issue involved?

A: That was a big part of it. The United States believed that a war with Japan was more acceptable to most American people because of the racial aspects. It was certainly a part of the violence. Americans used to cut up Japanese bodies, and they made arms into letter openers or kept skulls as souvenirs. They didn’t do that sort of thing to German or Italian prisoners. The real reason that they didn’t use the atomic bomb on the Germans was because it wasn’t ready. The atomic bomb hadn’t been tested when the Germans gave up.

Racism was a serious factor for the start of the war. However, there was simply no opportunity for the use of the atomic bomb. America couldn’t drop a bomb on Berlin after it was an ally when the Russians had already occupied it. America just wanted to show its allies, the Russians, that it could do it to Moscow. The racial aspect was how Americans thought that they could kill a lot of Asian people and their actions wouldn’t matter that much. They didn’t have the same thoughts about the French or even the Germans.

 

America Wouldn’t Have Had To Fight in Korea If It Hadn’t Fought the Pacific War

Q: How were America and Europe impacted?

A: The United States wound up having to fight two wars in Asia, which it wouldn’t have otherwise ever fought. The Korean War happened because of a clash between Russia and the United States over who controlled Korea. If Japan had controlled Korea, there would have never been a war. The Americans didn’t care about going into Korea to rescue the Koreans when they had the chance to do it in 1919. They actually sat it out.

 

Japan Gave Vietnam Confidence to Overthrow French Rule

Vietnam once belonged to France. The Vietnamese were able to throw out the French because of the Japanese invasion, which showed the Europeans that they couldn’t beat Asian people in their territories forever. That was another war that would have never happened if it had not been for the result of World War II.

 

Japan’s Greater East Asian War Ended the Period of White Superiority

Q: What happened to the idea of white superiority after the war?

A: After the war, people of color knew that White men could not control their countries forever. In the 1950s, Asian and Africans countries threw out the colonialists. Africa used to be a map of Europe with black people, but every country became independent. Asia used to belong to Britain, France, the Netherlands, and one time partially Germany; and all those countries have become independent. That was the beginning of the end of colonialism, which was probably the idea that Ito Hirobumi developed in the 19th century.
 

White Men Could Not Afford to Preserve Their Caste Systems

Q: How has the idea of racism changed?

A: Racism became politically unacceptable because it was too expensive to maintain.